Baja, Mexico: Tijuana -> Ensenada -> El Rosario (Day 1: 12/21, Sunday)

Breakfasted with Scottie and Dori at the Broken Yolk in San Diego, where I had my usual: California breakfast burrito with egg white, home fries, avocado, eggs, and bacon.

S&D dropped us off at the border to little fanfare, with Dori noting that Eric looked like he was off camping and I was on a trip to grandma's house. [grin]

No checkpoint, no guards, no officials. Just a stroll into the smoggy landscape, a turn of a revolving door, Eric in his cowboy hat, a massive hiking bag, backpack, and tent, me with my bookbag, a green plaid rolling suitcase (brand: Playboy), and an Adidas duffel--everyone else had more makeshift luggage in the form of garbage bags--and a friendly taxi driver who insisted that tourists weren't targets of the cartels in Tijuana (though a snatch I was able to catch of "luchares en las plazas" was a little disconcerting).

Eric and I spent some time groping blindly towards our car rental place, which turned out to be a tiny trailer in an out-of-the-way lot.

$700 for the car rental ballooned to something around $1,100 because we wanted to drop the car in Cabo instead of back in Tijuana; we decided to eat the extra charge between the two of us, then discovered that the car they had in mind for us was 1) manual and 2) without a CD-player. Fortunately, the rental guys were able to remedy the situation at no additional cost (we hoped), and we drove off without a hitch, excepting getting a trifle turned around in TJ before finally getting on La Carretera Transpeninsular.

Baja: fuckin' amazing food on the cheap, especially if you can get your American dollars exchanged for pesos ASAP--the exchange rate is 13 pesos to the dollar, and it being Sunday, we weren't able to find any banks and money-changers, and managed to get ripped off 'til we finally arrived in Guerrero Negro, just below the 28th parallel that designates Norte versus Sur and a time change.

Returning to Day 1:

We actually managed to find a Lonely Planet pick, El Taco de Hitzilopochtli, in Ensenada, despite both of our inabilities to pronounce the name and the endemic lack of street signs, partly because I hopped out of the car and said to some shopgirls, "Buscando por un restaurante: El Taco de Huitzil...er..." and partly because Eric has a ridiculous sense of direction.


Corn and mushroom quesadilla: more appetizing than it looks.

There we feasted on:
1) quesadillas of flor de calabaza (squash flower) and corn and mushroom (a type that grows on corn??)
2) a bright-tasting, melting-on-the-tongue lamb stew that came in foil
3) and some mole of shrimp and potato that seemed to be lacking in...shrimp and potato. At first I insisted that Eric had somehow changed the order to sheep brains, but he denied.
4) a jimaica drink made from dried hibiscus flowers that tasted to me like cran-apple.

Oh, but this is not before I managed to drive straight into a massive puddle of sewage water and a great wave of the stuff came pouring into the windows of the car while I simultaneously shrieked and reached for the power window button (wrong spot).

One should not have one's mouth open when one is being showered in shitty water because that shitty water has a tendency to land in one's mouth.

Eric went into laughing fits in between references to giardia and anime characters (apparently what I looked like at the moment of impact, my eyes squinted into crescents and my open mouth an upside-down triangle), while I spat ferociously and repeatedly out the driver's window and wiped what remained of the sewage onto Eric's arm.

Ech. Fortunately, I had no adverse intestinal effects, and by nightfall, we arrived in El Rosario at a magnificent little hotel called the Baja Cactus Motel, currently without a sign, but situated right off the Pemex gas station (Pemex is the only supplier of gas in the country, and I think is subsidized by the gov't).

The prices (something around 30 US$ for two people?) were absurdly low for fantastical digs, part Aspen ski lodge, part Mexican beach house (not that I've been to the former or latter).

We scuffled around town for about a half hour, all unpaved streets and (again) open sewage and some sort of motorcycle or 4-wheeler convention, and found an internet cafe that offered half an hour for five pesos (less than fiddy cents).

Dinner was at Mama Espinoza's, sort of the counterpoint to Taco Whatchamacallit earlier. One of those meals you have that remind you, as Anthony Bourdain is wont, that to get the good meals, you have to take the bad. I had the torta calamar, which was 1) not a torta and 2) tasted horribly of dried squid that'd been reconstituted (just add water). I managed to worry about 2/3rds of it down so as not to be a horrible, wasteful gringa, while Eric marveled at my fortitude and ate his just-okay fish tacos.

I brushed my teeth and thought my toothpaste had gone bad, until E. deigned to remind me not to use the tap water. Cuntsticks! But, again, no adverse effects.

Then, to bed in a massive king and Pretty Woman, where we learned that if you are an attractive whore with a heart of gold, you too can score a rich businessman who will take care of you for the rest of your life.